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A Mural Consecration Ceremony was held on February 7, 2016 at UC Santa Cruz’s Hong-Kingston Hall, where students created a mural honoring Maxine Hong-Kingston and Genny Lim.
Genny recalled, “We both came to the event and met the wonderful students. Hong-Lim Hall was formerly Oakes Hall, the dorm where students of color reside. The students voted for whom to name the hall after, and Maxine and I garnered the most votes. It was a cool event, I brought my mom and daughter, and we got lost as I took a wrong turn and navigated the Santa Cruz mountains. My carburetor started smoking, so I had to stop in a garage for a temporary fix and limped home. My poor mom was praying the whole time!!”
 Hong-Lim House Mural at UC Santa Cruz |
Hong-Lim House
Maxine Hong Kingston’s books are among the most widely read multicultural books in the national public school system. She was born in Stockton, California. Her parents came to the United States in the 1930s from a peasant village in China. As a child, she learned the millennia old Chinese legends, traditions and folk beliefs that helped her make sense of her own life. Her autobiographical novel, The Woman Warrior – Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, and her book, China Men, won national awards.
Genny Lim is a native of San Francisco. The author of Paper Angels, a prize winning drama about Chinese immigrants detained on Angel Island, Lim also co-authored Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island: 1910 -1940. Lim has been honored with the American Book Award and the 1988 New Genre fellowship from the California Arts Council. She teaches theater and women’s literature at the New College of California in San Francisco, and conducts the Poets in the Galleries program at the Fine Arts Museums of the San Francisco Arts Commission. She was the graduation speaker at Oakes College in June of 1995.